Scholae Palatinae

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The Scholae Palatinae (literally "Palatine College"), also known as Palitini, was a scholae (military training school) of an elite troop of soldiers in the Roman army created by the Emperor Constantine the Great to provide personal protection of the Emperor and his immediate family. It led to the tradition of the Paladin.

1 Origins
2 Structure
3 Evolution
4 References

[edit] Origins

Caesar Flavius Valerius Severus, following the orders of Galerius, attempted to disband the Praetorian Guard but only managed to lead the rest of them in revolting and joining Maxentius. When Constantine the Great, launching an invasion of Italy in 312, forced a final confrontation at the Milvian Bridge, the Praetorian cohorts made up most of Maxentius' army. Later in Rome, the victorious Constantine definitively disbanded the Praetorian Guard for good.

Afterwards, he instituted a new arm of Imperial household guards as their replacements, the Scholae Palatinae, or "Palatine College".

[edit] Structure

The Palatini were an elite cavalry regiment of around 500 troops. Their duties were entirely limited to protection of the Emperor and his family, unlike the broader duties of the earlier Praetorians. The Palitini was composed entirely of warriors from tribal peoples of the Western Empire, mainly Germannic tribed. There were four reasons for this: the first of these is that Germannic warriors were held by the Romans to be extremely fierce and brave fighters; the second is that the Romans had always been in slight awe of the stature of the Germannic peoples, who surpassed the native Romans substantially in height, and thus presented a formidable and imposing stature as a group; the third is that, as stated by Tacitus, they were chosen "because they were foreign" - that is, they were not Romans and were therefore supposed to be less interested in the kind of political meddling that so plagued the Praetorians; the fourth reason is that the troops were not only chosen from beyond the Empire's borders but were officered by slaves and freedmen - they were therefore not citizens and were of the lowest social classes, which meant that they could not progress in Roman society at all except within the Palatini, thus it was hoped again to curb any interest in anything other than their official duties.

[edit] Evolution

The Scholae Palatinaeof Constantine I grew and evolved over the course of more than a century to become the larger, less elite Comitatenses Palatini - an entire field army commanded by the Roman Emperor.